Montréal Contemporary Music Lab

4 June 2016, 19:00 - 23:00

PIERRE-LUC SÉNÉCAL

WARREN ENSTROM

RICARDO CASTAGNOLA

ALEXANDRA SPENCE

The Montréal Contemporary Music Lab (MCML) is a 10-day performance and creation workshop exploring, celebrating, and creating bonds between performers, composers, sound artists and improvisers engaged in the act of creating new music.

Formed in 2011 by seven emerging musicians in Montréal, they form collective run entirely by and for young and emerging artists.

In addition to the main thoroughfare of rehearsing and producing new music, participants will take part in workshops, lectures, masterclasses, concerts, social outings, collective meals, and spontaneous events. Our invited guest artists are present throughout the lab, presenting workshops, providing coaching during rehearsal and studio times, attending concerts and exhibitions, and providing feedback during our many open forums for discussion. The event concludes in a concert showcasing the collaborative efforts of everyone involved. MCML is a workshop for emerging musicians with an open mind. It is not a competition, nor is it a festival. For some, it is a first foray into contemporary music making and sound art; while for others, it is a chance to meet people and forge connections with others in the community. The Lab is a supportive environment in which to experiment, learn, and most importantly, collaborate in music making.

PIERRE-LUC SÉNÉCAL : Shards of Creation
Shards of creation is the 4th installment of cyber.hate.machine, a project based on the contrasts between death metal and electronic/acousmatic music. After experimenting with various formats (videoclip, live performance and art video), Sénécal decided to try theater. A choreography of strong poetical images, voiceovers and immersive music plunge us in the story and the mind of William Grim, the fictional character who created cyber.hate.machine. “Shards of creation” is a first episode in a series of prequels. It explains the existence of the character(s) at the core of this project, and foreshadows some of its key elements: catharsis, duality and (metaphorical) a form of aggressiveness.

Music composer, critic, regular sound designer for theater and manager for nonprofit organizations, Pierre-Luc Senécal is piecing together his reputation as a committed advocate of all art forms, especially experimental music. His work has been presented in the United States, Canada, Monaco and Germany. His piece, Schrei, a composition on the thematic of the Nazi genocide, has been presented during the San Francisco Tape Music Festival 2014 and the soundLAB – soundCollective exhibition project. His project, cyber.hate.machine, which incorporates elements of death metal and acousmatic music, will be presented during the Montreal Contemporary Music Lab.

WARREN ENSTROM : Sunlight Synth
The sunlight synth experiences the passing of time as sunlight creeping across a floor. As shadows move across the space, and as light levels fluctuate, the sunlight synth responds with shifts in texture, density, and character. In bright sunlight, the synth "charges," storing energy for later, darker periods. At night, and in particularly dark moments during the day, the synth uses its stored energy to continue to produce sound. Once its energy begins to dwindle, the synth again changes character to reflect its new state. The sunlight synth sonifies the sunlight and shadows passing through a given space, creating a unique sonic fingerprint of that space in place and time, and illustrates different modes and experiences of passing time.

Warren Enström is a composer, performer, and sound artist who finds joy in pushing unlikely materials together into unorthodox relationships: super balls into pianos, thimbles onto cymbals, and paper shredders into modulators. He likes snow, fresh art, and playing small jokes on life. His installations have been shown at the Montréal Contemporary Music Lab 2016, SEAMUS 2016 at Georgia Southern University, N_SEME 2015 at Bowling Green State University, Kenilworth Open Studios 2014, and Kenilworth Arts and Tech Night 2013. He is currently pursuing a Master of Arts at Wesleyan University, working with Paula Matthusen and Ron Kuivila.

RICARDO CASTAGNOLA : The Mirror of Truth
An urban legend of Ancient Rome times tells about a round marble stone named “The Mouth of Truth”, on which the face of a divinity with an open mouth was sculpted. It was common belief that it had the power to reveal the innocence or guilty of person. The one suspected of betrayal was asked by the accuser and had to state his innocence putting his hand into the mouth hole. If he could remove it easily he was considered innocent, but if the hand remained stuck into it, he was immediately condemned. How would it be if the roles were swapped and you had to judge other people’s statements, like the spirit of the stone mask? What if you were asked for proving your innocence by the mask itself?

ALEXANDRA SPENCE : The Cities, They Tremble
‘The cities, they tremble’ is an audio-visual installation that explores sound and/in the city, through an examination of resonance and vibration in everyday objects. When speaking of our ‘sounding’ environments, the distinction between the body and its environment becomes blurred - our bodies literally resonate with our surroundings through the vibration of sound. ‘The cities, they tremble’ explores the idea of listening as an active and bodily practice, examining the ways in which our individual notions of place and identity are shaped and mediated through sound, as well as the ways in which context and interaction can offer new meaning. By foregrounding background sounds within an art practice, the listener becomes more aware of the sounds that are constantly being processed by it’s body.

Alexandra Spence is a sound artist and musician from Sydney, Australia, currently based in Vancouver, Canada. She works within the fields of composition, improvised music, and sound installation. Spence has presented her work in concerts, festivals, symposiums and galleries in Australia, Canada, and Europe, including the Women In Sound Women On Sound forum: Educating Girls in Sound, Lancaster, UK; NOW Now Festival, Sydney, AU, Destroy Vancouver, CA; Toronto International Electroacoustic Symposium, CA; and the FKL Symposium, Besenello, IT. In collaboration with artist Katrina Stamatopoulos, Alex has presented work at Is This Art? dLux Media Arts, Sydney, AU; DAS2015, Belfast, IE; and Festival Images Contre Nature, Marseille, FR. Alex is a MFA candidate at Simon Fraser University.